Caligula: A Biography

by Aloys Winterling

  The people of Rome also continued to stand behind the emperor, who provided a generous supply of bread and circuses. Discord arose occasionally: When the people protested higher taxes Caligula sent out the Praetorian Guard, and he mocked the traditional relationship between the aristocracy and the commoners by sending old gladiators and injured men into the arena to fight against broken-down animals. This did not damage his popularity permanently, however, for he continued to sponsor “serious” games, and regularly distributed large sums of money. Josephus reports that the common people of Rome had an unfavorable opinion of the Senate and saw the emperor as their protection from the greed of the aristocracy.

  The emperor’s support among soldiers limited the threat that provincial governors from the senatorial order could pose to him. Moreover, Caligula’s predecessors had already developed a new approach to the fundamental problem of rivalry with the aristocracy. There was an increasing tendency to choose “new men” from the equestrian order to fill positions that conferred extensive military power. Most of these appointees had excellent military and bureaucratic abilities, and they also owed their promotion, and consequent advancement into the highest rank of society, to the emperor. They enjoyed little prestige among aristocrats, commoners, or soldiers. All of this checked any danger of usurpation they might have represented. The recent failure of Lentulus Gaetulicus no doubt functioned as a curb on similar ambitions, and the recall of Lucius Vitellius from Syria proved that the emperor kept an eye on everything.

  There were also senators in Rome who cooperated with the emperor and benefited from their ties to him. Various sources confirm that some of them maintained particular “friendships” with Caligula, attending his banquets, inviting him to their own, and accompanying him to public events such as theatrical performances. A few have already been mentioned. Vitellius had counted as a close friend of Caligula’s since his diplomatic comment on the conversation with the moon goddess; he was the son of a man from the equestrian order who had served as a financial administrator under Augustus. His own son Aulus Vitellius, the later emperor, belonged to the emperor’s inner circle as a familiaris. Quintus Pomponius Secundus, Caligula’s co-consul at the start of 41 and the man who kissed the emperor’s feet at a banquet, was the empress Caesonia’s half brother. Gnaeus Sentius Saturninus was the son of a senator who had accompanied Germanicus, Caligula’s father, on his journey to the East.

  Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus, a well-known orator, is said to have enjoyed Caligula’s special favor and to have accompanied him on his march to Germania. His father had been the first member of the family to achieve consular status, under Augustus. After that he had been adopted by the knight Gaius Sallustius Crispus, one of the closest confidants and most important political advisers of the first princeps. Later, under Claudius, he was married for a time to Agrippina, Caligula’s sister and Claudius’s niece (and later wife). Another member of Caligula’s inner circle was Valerius Asiaticus. He came from the town of Vienna in the province of Gaul and owed his membership in the Roman Senate to the patronage of Antonia Minor, Caligula’s grandmother, whom he had once courted at the same time as Lucius Vitellius. It appears that he was married to Lollia Saturnina, sister of the Lollia Paulina who was briefly Caligula’s wife. Other documented members of the emperor’s coterie in early 41 are Marcus Vinicius, Annius Vinicianus, and Paullus Arruntius. Vinicius had married Caligula’s sister Julia Livilla in 33, but clearly had been able to thrive politically despite her banishment. His grandfather came from the equestrian order and rose to senatorial status as one of Augustus’s most important generals. While Arruntius is otherwise unknown to us, Vinicianus was presumably Vinicius’s nephew.

  Some of these senators are reported to have been extraordinarily wealthy. None of them was descended from an old senatorial family of the Republican era; they had all risen to prominence in the Senate and the consulship through service to the emperor and as a result of his support. A few had been able to cement their position by marrying into his family. It was probably these men who took the lead in proposing flattering honors for Caligula and denouncing colleagues, and who procured themselves personal advantage through their proximity to the emperor and the opportunities for influence that resulted from it. In the case of Lucius Vitellius this is documented. Nonetheless their position was anything but pleasant. Claudius also was among Caligula’s everyday associates, and just as he had to endure mockery and humiliation, so must the other members of this circle, as Vitellius and Pomponius did. The relationships between Caligula and these “friends” from the senatorial order were thus hardly characterized by mutual trust; here, too, communication ran in the customary ambiguous ways: In public they were submissive, but in fact, according to Josephus, they hated him. They were even aware of the others’ hatred but did not dare to mention it, let alone initiate a conspiracy. While they maintained “friendly” relations with one another, they were full of suspicion and feared denunciation if they spoke out.

  The center of power was occupied by others. Besides the empress Caesonia, the closest circle around Caligula comprised the two Praetorian prefects and freedmen like Callistus, Helicon, or Protogenes. What was true of the “new men” in the aristocracy was even truer for them: They owed their rise from obscurity to the emperor; he had been their path to enormous power and wealth, and they were accordingly hated by the aristocracy. They were, so to speak, identified with the emperor, and there was little chance that they could survive his fall.

  ALEXANDRIA AN ALTERNATIVE?

  As we have seen, the emperor had a firm grip on power. All the same, toward the end of 40, many people in Rome were probably asking themselves how long things could go on this way. Caligula had been back in the city for four months, and he had used this time to attack the aristocrats of the senatorial order—forcing them to submit to him, exploiting them financially, humiliating them in personal relations, and exposing them to public ridicule. The odds that they could mount a successful conspiracy had dropped to near zero since the consulars’ wives and children had been interned on the Palatine Hill. But what were the emperor’s plans? At some point his revenge on the aristocracy for its attacks would have to be satisfied. What would come next?

  Caligula must also have been asking himself questions about the future. He had already a year and a half earlier unmasked the ambiguity that had characterized communication between the emperor and the aristocracy since the time of Augustus in a way that made a return to it impossible. He had openly addressed the truth behind the aristocracy’s public displays of obsequiousness—the fundamental rivalry between every emperor and high-ranking senators—most recently in jokes at the expense of Pompeius Magnus. He had likewise laid bare his own paradoxical position within the ranks of the aristocracy. He had long since ceased to envision Rome under imperial rule in the Augustan sense. Now he had chosen to destroy the old hierarchy and introduced a cult of his own worship. Was that a real alternative? Of course not, since he was using his deification largely as one more way to expose the senatorial aristocrats’ self-abasement as hypocritical. It merely represented the high point of his campaign to dishonor them and confirmed at the same time that in reality no one venerated the emperor at all.

  A second factor also came into play. The more time Caligula spent working to destroy the honor of aristocrats, the more he demonstrated how deeply his own position was embedded in Rome’s aristocratic society. It must have been apparent that to make his superior position manifest and to enhance his own status he needed to degrade the others. In other words, he remained enmeshed in the old system of ranking precisely because he was so intent on abolishing it. His attempts to escape from the paradoxes of the emperor’s role created new paradoxes, which perpetuated the old ones in inverted form. Was there a way out of such a quandary? Certainly not in Rome. There was no possibility of establishing a monarchy there, within political and social structures built up over centuries of Republican tradition.

  In Philo’s r
eport on his legation to Caligula he mentions three times that the emperor was planning a journey to Alexandria, the city that the emperor had first seen as a child and where he had already been awarded great honors: “He was possessed by an extraordinary and passionate love for Alexandria. His heart was entirely set upon visiting it and on his arrival staying there for a very considerable time. For he thought this city was unique . . . and that its vast size and the worldwide value of its admirable situation had made it a pattern to other cities . . .” (Phil. Leg. 338). Philo ascribes part of Caligula’s fascination with the city to the powerful influence of his servant Helicon, who was himself originally from Alexandria: “Elated with visions of that occasion when in the presence of his master and of almost the whole habitable world, since undoubtedly all the men of light and learning in the cities would journey from the furthermost parts to join in homage to Gaius, he [Helicon] would be honored by the greatest and most illustrious city of them all . . .” (Phil. Leg. 173). Philo also writes, however, that Caligula believed he could realize his wish to be venerated as a god there. The majority population of Alexandria had in fact enhanced its standing in his eyes by promoting the emperor’s cult over the protests of the Jewish inhabitants. Josephus confirms that the emperor had plans to travel to Alexandria and reports that all the preparations had been completed by January of 41. Finally, Suetonius states that Caligula was then planning to move his residence and the imperial capital first to Antium, where he had been born, and afterwards to Alexandria.

  Intentions of this kind were less aberrant than they might seem. Julius Caesar had stayed in Alexandria for a time, with Cleopatra. Before he was murdered, there were rumors that he wanted to leave Rome and concentrate the armed forces of the Empire in Alexandria (or Ilium), and that he would entrust the governing of Rome to his advisers. Marcus Antonius, Octavian’s last great rival in the civil war and, like him, a great-grandfather of Caligula, had governed his part of the Empire from Alexandria and it is reported that he, too, had plans to make the city into a permanent capital. Last but not least, both Plutarch and Cassius Dio mention that as Nero’s fall was approaching in the year 68 he intended to flee to Egypt and try to sustain his position from there.

  In fact the city of Alexandria, the old capital of the Ptolemaic kings, was excellently suited as an alternative center of rule. According to Tacitus, one of Augustus’s dominationis arcana, his “secret principles of domination,” consisted of keeping Egypt for himself after the civil war. From then on senators and leading knights were prohibited from setting foot there without special permission. The old monarchical structures of the country remained intact, and the representative of the emperor governed through them in the role of a vice-king. Hence no one of senatorial rank was appointed as proconsul; prefects from the equestrian order were sent instead, as less likely to conceive thoughts of usurpation from the extent of their powers. In that era Egypt was the source of the Italian grain supply, so that—as Tacitus observes—it would have been easy to starve Italy from there. Furthermore, because of Egypt’s geostrategic location it was possible to occupy and defend the country with a small force “against armies however formidable” (Tac. Ann. 2.59.3).

  Egypt’s special status was one part of Caligula’s thinking. Another part derived from what he had experienced in his own short life. His first seven years as a member of his father’s entourage in Germania and the East, his own campaigns in the North, his sojourns in Gaul and on the Gulf of Baiae—all these experiences had demonstrated that a Roman emperor could function as a mobile hub of government, so to speak, military and financial affairs included. With a minimum of military and administrative staff, he could collect taxes and draft recruits wherever he happened to be; he could carry out massive construction projects and display his power; he could correspond with cities and governors throughout the Empire, or receive delegations. Most importantly, Caligula had observed at close range that Tiberius served essentially unchallenged as Roman emperor even though permanently absent from Rome. For almost twelve years, from 26 until his death, he had resided on a small island and not set foot in the city. If it was possible to govern from Capri, why not from Alexandria, where the preconditions were considerably better?

  Still it is possible that something quite different prompted Caligula to leave Rome. During the investigation of the most recent conspiracy, the senators’ hatred for him had found expression in a scene he could not have anticipated. Caligula had intended to force Capito, father of the conspirator Betilienus Bassus, to witness the execution of his own son and finally threatened to kill him as well. Faced with death, Capito made a statement that took the weapons of denunciation and fear, which had prevailed in Caligula’s hands up to that time, and turned them against the emperor: “Finding his life in danger, he pretended to have been one of the conspirators and promised to disclose the names of all the rest; and he named the companions of Gaius and those who abetted his licentiousness and cruelty.” That is, he denounced Caligula’s close aristocratic associates (probably the persons mentioned above), as well as his nonaristocratic aides, into which category people like Helicon or Protogenes must have fallen. “And he would have brought many to their deaths,” as Cassius Dio reports, “had he not gone on to accuse the prefects, Callistus, and Caesonia, and so aroused disbelief.” (Dio 59.26.7 [Zonaras]).

  The people Capito denounced suffered no harm, and Capito was executed, but he had achieved his goal: Caligula began to harbor suspicions about his closest advisers and confidants, misgivings about the powerful people who both profited from his rule and served as its most important props. This is understandable, given his experiences a year earlier with his sisters and Aemilius Lepidus. Later, when he was alone—without his bodyguards—he sent for the prefects and Callistus and told them, “ ‘I am but one, and you are three; and I am defenseless, whereas you are armed. If, therefore, you hate me and desire to kill me, slay me!’ When they fell at his feet and besought him, claiming that they had no such intention regarding him, he withdrew, pretending to be convinced. As a result of this affair, he believed that he was hated and that they were vexed at his behavior, and so he suspected them and wore a sword at his side when in the city; not only was he suspicious of their friendship, but they, also, on their side, were filled with fear. And to forestall any harmony of action on their part he attempted to embroil them with one another, by pretending to make a confidant of each one separately and talking to him about the others, until they understood his purpose . . .” (Dio 59.28.8).

  Now the situation had become hazardous. The fates of Callistus and the Praetorian prefects were attached to the emperor. If he let one of them fall—or all of them, one after the other—there would be general rejoicing, at least within the Roman aristocracy. If the emperor himself were brought down, they would fall with him. With the power they wielded through their proximity to him, they could achieve all kinds of things, but there was one thing that remained beyond their reach. Callistus was a former slave, and the prefects had been knights of no particular distinction. Their social standing meant that they could not remove him and take his place. Their lack of social prestige had been precisely what qualified them for the offices they held. The most powerful men in the Empire after the emperor were now under pressure to act. If the emperor did not regain his confidence in them, they had only one option. Caligula too must have clearly recognized what that meant.

  According to Josephus his departure for Alexandria was scheduled for 25 January 41. Who was to accompany him there and who to remain behind in Rome is not recorded.

  FIVE

  Murder on the Palatine

  The great failed conspiracies of 39 opened and escalated the conflicts between Caligula and the Roman aristocracy. What they lacked, apparently, were conspirators—or at least no one wanted to admit having taken part in them. Instead, as we have seen, aristocratic historiography was at some pains to suppress all mention of them. For the conspiracy that led to the emperor’s murder, the exact oppo
site is the case. The sources mention a strikingly large number of aristocrats’ names, and there are even four different possible leaders to choose from. After identifying the core group, Cassius Dio goes on to say, “Nearly all the people around the emperor were won over, both on their own account and for the common good. And those who did not take part in the conspiracy did not reveal it when they knew of it, and were glad to see a plot formed against him” (Dio 59.29.1a).

  One thing is certain: This is not how Caligula met his death. There was mutual distrust extending all the way into his innermost circle, as Dio reports himself, and a widespread willingness to denounce others—one may think of the scene of Protogenes in the Senate not long before. In view of these circumstances, a conspiracy with many participants and many others in the know would not only have been extremely stupid; it would also undoubtedly have failed. The reason for the false information in the sources is obvious. After Caligula had been assassinated, men could gain credit as principled members of the aristocracy by claiming to have taken part in or known about the plot. At the same time they could wipe out the memory of the inglorious role they had actually played as hypocritical sycophants.

  Figure 6. Coin depicting Caligula. RIC 37 (Gaius).

  What actually occurred? Tacitus notes briefly that the emperor Gaius was murdered in “secret treachery” (occultae insidiae), in contrast to Julius Caesar, who was killed by a conspiracy of senators. All accounts are in agreement that the actual murder was committed by two tribunes of the Praetorian Guard, Cassius Chaerea and Cornelius Sabinus, with the assistance of a number of centurions, and that Callistus and the Praetorian prefects were informed about the plan in advance. Flavius Josephus, who provides the most detailed description, on the basis of a nearly contemporary senatorial history, identifies the architects of the conspiracy as one Aemilius Regulus of Cordoba (of whom nothing more is known) and Annius Vinicianus, along with Cassius Chaerea. In Josephus’s own account of the murder itself, however, Regulus plays no role and Vinicianus plays a minor one. Many years later, people in Rome recalled Valerius Asiaticus as the most important leader of the conspirators, but this view is contradicted by Josephus and Dio’s credible accounts of his actions after the murder. Furthermore, Josephus reports that more senators among the emperor’s close associates knew about the planned assassination, but at the same time he writes that the murderers found pretexts to lure them away from the scene before killing the emperor; this obviously argues against the claim that they were aware of the plot.